Published on leanpub in 2017, this book is Weinberg's most comprehensive treatment of error as a phenomenon. The title taxonomy — bugs, boo-boos, blunders — signals that not all errors are alike, and that conflating them leads to ineffective responses. Different error types require different detection strategies, different prevention approaches, and different organizational responses.
The "Eight Laws of Error Defense" provide the book's organizing structure. These laws synthesize insights from psychology-of-computer-programming-1971, the quality-software-management-framework series, and decades of consulting on software quality. Error defense is framed as a systems design problem, not a personnel problem — an organization that blames individuals for errors is one that will keep having them.
The connection to technical-reviews-and-walkthroughs is direct: reviews are one of the most powerful error detection mechanisms available, but they work only when the social conditions support honest reporting. An organization where people hide errors to avoid blame is one where reviews will find only the errors people are comfortable revealing.
Weinberg draws on the full range of error research, from human factors to accident investigation to software reliability engineering. The synthesis is characteristic of his late style — bringing together bodies of knowledge that rarely talk to each other, finding the deeper pattern that explains why superficially different situations produce similar failure modes.
This late-career book represents Weinberg returning to ground he'd been working since the beginning — the human causes and organizational consequences of software errors — with the full weight of his accumulated understanding.